Seriously. I knew realignment would end up with Tampa in a much more difficult division (you can't get any worse than the Southeast was, really), and that's completely fair and needed from a competitive balance perspective, but some semblance of intuition behind the process is apparently too much to ask.

It's like Bettman repurposed Shanahan's Wheel of Justice to come up with this mess.

I don't care about how hard the division is. To be the best you need to beat the best.

What I hate is how contrived this thing is and that the teams in the east literally each have a lower chance at making the playoffs than the teams in the west.

Plus its going to really be effed up when Miami/Florida relocates to Quebec or who knows where.

Colin campbell judt got killed for hid rulings. We chamged and get the same ridiculous rulings. At what point do you question if campbell had anything to do wirh the rulings and if th nhl makes the rulings?

As for beating the best, I would agree to an extent if you had to do that in your own division. But when you play completely differeny teams on different terms (uneven home and away) that goes out the window. Not to mention, how many times in sports do you see the bottom seed win it all? The kings didn't beat the beat throughout the year and got an 8 seed, does that mean their title doesn't count?

The only trouble with this is that it's more sensible than the circlejerk the league somehow came up with, and the poster clearly forgot a key fact: the Hockey Powers That Be in the thriving, very important and influential "metropolis" of Detroit didn't want to do the western travel gig any longer and exerted sufficiently irresistible pressure for realignment to occur in the first place.

We may take a hit in the short run by playing in a harder division, but in the long run it will make us raise the bar and help us sustain an elite level. I think the Southeast Division allowed for a certain complacency. Now we know it'll take a lot more to compete for a banner every year. That change in mindset is probably healthy from a hockey standpoint.